Bed building

So I take my work from Sheffield to the van, and the install goes OK. Slow and steady as I have to bond plywood to timber framing and leave each one for hours to dry.

Here you see the general appoach, pile heavy stuff on to get a good seal.
I made a video at the end.

But my phone battery died before I finished.

Bed - 2nd side

I toyed with various ideas for this part of the bed. First I thought of a fixed bench with storage underneath, but the measurement did not work. The other part of the bed is 80cm wide, and with the pullout reaches about 137cm. The width of the van is 197cm, and a standard double bed is 190cm.

Then I thought to repeat the design on the facing side, but with a height of 35cm and depth about the same this did not seem practical.

Then I happened upon this image on pinterest, but I could not find any accompanying information and it did not seem finished. In any case I used this as a template.

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/46/4a/51/464a51ed4ac5f839ea1fb1e7b80d8926.jpg

The top is made of 3.6mm plywood and has a hinge to a slightly smaller piece of plywood. I used a piano hinge, problem is evident that the screws I used protrude from the plywood, I needed to attach an extra strip of plywood and to chisel a hollow to allow this to lie flat. 

This will fold and rest on 3 doors, the remaining problem is supporting the length of plywood at the far edge. For this I constructed 2 rectangles of wood to be braced between the 3 doors. The doors need catches to hold them closed, and wooden stops to hold the wooden rectangles. I find the door on 1 end can move slightly past the normal but this has not yet caused a problem.

I have been storing the wooden rectangles (not shown) inside this bench, but this is not a good use of the space as they are at an angle wasting space. Next step is to face them with plywood and have them form a 'back' to the bench, this can have the double purpose of filling the gap at the edge of the mattress and the space available (190 vs. 197cm).

If doing this again I would have the foldout plywood rest on the edge of the pullout on the facing side, then the supports would not be needed.